


drank so much sunlight

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [29]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But Mostly Comfort, Dissociation, F/F, Femslash February, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Reintegration, Recovery, The Girls Are Not Alright, The Transformers: Till All Are One (IDW)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 10:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: You look like you’ve eaten the sun, likeyou drank so much sunlight you’re drowning in it.-They will never be the same again.





	drank so much sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> Vague but pretty major spoilers for lategame wheelfic events - nothing stated outright, but a lot implied as part of the very concept of this fic, all of it subject to change depending on how wheelfic develops as it gets written. Read at your own risk.
> 
> Yes, I'm writing it before wheelfic is even done. No, I have no self-control. Yes, these past two months have been a Disaster. Why do you ask?
> 
>  
> 
> [Some tunes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGR4U7W1dZU)

When Chromia wakes, Windblade is already gone. The recharge berth hangs low on the wall, only a few meters off the floor - standard on Caminus - and the pale sheets hang half off the edge where Windblade slipped out, the gold circuits stitched into the hem glinting in the soft sunlight.

The first few times, it jolts her - harder than she wants to admit. It's not the pulse of concern of a cityspeaker's guard, who in her lifetime might only ever need worry about her charge getting jostled in a bustling crowd at a festival, or damaged in a repair rite gone awry. Caminus was well-mapped; the only real danger came from his slow, dreaming decline, or carelessness. They trained to fight, to protect their charges, but so much of it was formal patterns. They improvised for fun or for exhibitions.

Now Chromia's internal systems spasm with a microburst of cold fear, fist clenching in the sheets as she rolls upright, because she knows that Cybertron kills people. Even its heroes walk around steeped in old blood. Violence simmers under the surface like acid, and everyone carries a grudge and an integrated weapons system Camien builds can never match. Windblade devotes herself to Metroplex with something deeper and fiercer than duty, too bright eyed and determined and earnest to see the knives lining up behind her. Crush her down, and she only digs in deeper. Starscream knows where they are, always, and one day, this place will kill Windblade, too. It'll spill over, and Chromia won't be able to save her. Every day Metroplex dies a little more, the streets grow a little dingier, and their options for escape contract like a vice, a tightening gyre. She _knows_ , and the knowing threads through her processor like a virus. Nothing she does will ever be enough.

(The bomb will never be enough.)

A year of exile didn't absolve her. Nothing, Chromia thinks, ever will. But when the despair loops, a desperate, endless ring, she can recognize it for what it is. Arcee had no patience for useless panic in any form, and Chromia could ask for no more ruthless a tutor. Mostly because when Arcee got too irritated by emotions, she just - left.

When Chromia cuts the ongoing process, weariness hits her like a hammer. Mental fatigue, from her own system driving itself in circles. Yet the panic ebbs, and reason seeps back in its place.

She slumps, hands closed loosely by her sides, and lets the last of the adrenalin clear her lines. When she's sure of herself - when she remembers that Cybertron is dead and gone, and no one but Chromia calls her Windblade anymore, and _nothing will ever be the same_ -

Only then does Chromia cycle a deep vent, and look out the open window.

-

Bumblebee maps the area for her. Of all the circle of mecha closest to them, he's the one with the fewest formal obligations in the government, and the most time to spare to scout the terrain for a quiet place.

"An hour's drive out from Caminus and Vigilem," he says, sketching out the route on the holo of this section of the continent, while Chromia paces. Agitation is a habit; only truly dangerous mecha can afford to stand still. "Less by air. The river bends a little to the south; no direct line of sight."

It's as good as Chromia can hold out for.

-

The solarium wraps around the outside of the building, an open porch: a raised step up from the ground on all sides, accessible through sliding glass doors. The panels of the floor are smooth metal covered with thin bark mats. Water bubbles over between a set of overlapping saucers, trickling down around a corner pillar and set of crystal arrangements until it cascades back into the river that snakes under the steps. Someone lopped off the rough edges of the stones in the river and polished them smooth, so that they form a winding path just under the water, flanked by green pads as wide as Chromia's shield with sharp white flowers. The river broadens here, nearly half a kilometer wide and shallow, and the dark, glittering water mostly reflects the thick growth on both banks: the thick, dark grey trunks of gnarled cybertrees, their blue biolights dim in the morning light, interspersed with willowy, overhanging spirals of yellow and pink flowers that almost brush the tips of the water weeds.

This far out from the Titan cities, the air's very clear. Thicker with plant matter - but this isn't an organic planet, no matter how clean the water or green the undergrowth. Circuitry threads through every leaf, petal, and stem. On sunny days when the sky is a clear, violently energon blue, metal ore glints along the riverbed. Sometimes it seems to have grown there overnight, and Chromia's head hurts when she starts to wonder.

Every ten days, Chromia goes to Transmutate and together they clear Windblade's schedule, while a grumbling Starscream unceremoniously usurps her office and glowers at anyone who expects to speak to the Speaker of Neo-Cybertron on her day off.

(It's pretty much the only thing he's good for, as far as Chromia's concerned. They're never going to be on good terms.)

And every ten days, Chromia keeps pace under Windblade's bright contrail of pink and blue light as they drive out along the bend of the river, and it seems like the forest grows - deeper. More complex.

This planet is supposed to be a template. The mold into which Cybertron of old was originally poured and forged, the crust under their feet merely a thin shell around the molten metal of the new core, slowly cooling and settling under their feet. It's designed to open on a hinge; everything about it is artificial. There's no reason for there to be a functioning ecosystem. Especially not one that seems to be adapting and evolving before their eyes. It shouldn't feel like the template is growing around them, like a protoform unfolding into its next instar.

But a Cybertronian called Censere came to this place - scorched and blasted, hollow and barren - and planted his memorial to the billions of dreaming dead. It thrived, green and blooming long before they arrived, and no one, as far as Chromia can tell, ever asked _how_.

So Chromia stops and rests a closed hand on the open door, absorbing what she can see with bleary optics.

Windblade sits on the edge of the solarium, dark wings canted down, legs folded under her on one of the silvery mats, as she looks out over the water. In the morning light, from behind, she looks exactly the same as she did to Chromia so long ago - vulnerable, too eager to throw herself forward with her whole spark in hand, head always tilting up toward the sky.

No more gold at the side of her helm. The black paint of the back of her helm and the red of her collar gleams, too fresh, where they reapply the repair nanites every morning.

A year, and Chromia missed so much. She used to take for granted that everything Windblade knows, she would also know - the implicit, unbroken trust between a cityspeaker and her shield.

Chromia shattered it. They limped along a while longer, their steps out of sync, a beat off of a rhyme, her guilt an unspoken wedge of silence between them. She was a liability from the moment she planted the detonator, and decided that Windblade's life was worth more than three others - more than anyone who might have been lost when Metroplex ripped free of Cybertron's gravity well. The rest was just noise.

By the time she came back, Windblade had a new name and a new face. All that bright, irrepressible determination reforged into the kind of will that can remake worlds and win the sparks of Titans. When she walked into danger, head held high, she didn't have time to spare for Chromia to play catch up; she just saw what needed to be done, and did it.

Windvoice will never fit back into the shape of Windblade. That memory Chromia clung to, when it felt like her own sense of self was slipping away through the cracks - they can never go back to that moment. They've outgrown it, for good or for worse.

Now, it doesn't matter how far they are from any other Titan. Now, when Windblade stares out over the water, music drifts in her wake.

-

The Matriarch of Incaendium understands, with quiet, clear sight that seems to pierce right through Chromia.

It's easier to approach her than it used to with the Mistress of Flame; since the Mistress's disgrace and retreat into sabbatical, the Matriarch eschews the main temple of the Way of Flame, and instead holds court in the art temples of Cordis. She kneels quietly by one of the new canals, the deep crimson of her cloak the only thing that marks her out from the rest of the priesthood. The golden bars that used to weigh the forward curve of her hood over her pale maskplate now hang down her back, forgotten.

It's a stark contrast to the aloof, regal sense of _presence_ that made the Mistress of Flame so distant. Anyone who infringed on the Mistress's prerogative or otherwise spoke out of turn faced the censure of the Way of Flame. Someone like Chromia - a younger guard of cityspeaker acolytes - would never have the honor of speaking to the Mistress directly. The day Windblade was chosen for the sacred duty of leaving Caminus to reconnect with lost Cybertron, Chromia could only bow her head as the Mistress laid a hand on Windblade's shoulder in formal blessing, before rising to her full, towering height to sweep away through the warm, flickering lights. Windblade almost vibrated out of her armor with anticipation as they went to collect Nautica: optics blazing, lips pursed against an irrepressible smile until they were well away, and her canted wings wired high with an excitement unbefitting a cityspeaker on a solemn mission.

Things are different now.

"This can be done," the Matriarch says, when Chromia stops hemming and hawing around the point and spits it out. Her red optics ping Chromia with an unease she can't always shake off, lately - just another thing to thank Cybertron for. Her low voice is kind and even as she lets a hand trail between the white waterflowers and their round, blue-circuited pads. "It would be our honor."

Which is, Chromia thinks, half of the problem. She flexes her hands into fists and watches her own indistinct reflection in the water do the same.

It's not quite bitterness, though it could be; not quite anger, though a sharp snap chokes in her vocalizer queue. She wanted to bring Windblade back here. Here was supposed to be home, and if Chromia could just get her _home_ , everything would be alright again. Windblade wouldn't talk herself hoarse and bleed herself dry trying to save a world that didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve her.

Yet the same Mistress of Flame who sent Windblade out into the world slapped her down and declared her an apostate. They hated her, and now they worship her, and all Chromia wants to do is shake them and demand to know _where were you when she needed you_.

But it needs to be them. Windblade could go to any Titan on this damn planet and they'd gladly reshape themselves to make a place for her.

(And that, too, is part of the problem.)

But just retreating to another city wouldn't give her _peace._

The Camiens build at the bend in the river, so it looks like home: all simple, elegant lines, with an eye for beauty and harmony over function, working the water into the design rather than building over it. Chromia insists that nothing come from a Titan, and they take it as a challenge to use the cyberforest around the location instead. Once they finish, Chromia sweeps through the rooms and clears out the gifts and offerings they left to decorate the halls.

No holoscreens, no datapads. If it'd been located any further from Metroplex, Starscream would have thrown a fit. He still does throw a fit when Chromia tells him, but she folds her arms and waits him out with gritted teeth, while Bumblebee patiently walks him through the rest.

When Windblade shakes her head and attempts to plead her own excuses - she simply can't, there's too much that she needs to do still - Lightbright gently plucks the Speaker out of her seat and settles in front of Metroplex's mind herself, humming a cheerful tune as Metroplex helpfully shifts his focus to her.

And from the first moment Windblade sets foot in the house - turning in a slow circle with optics that see too much, that stare too hard at things no one else sees - her shoulders fall slack. Chromia hitches her hip against the counter by the door and watches for a sign that this is not enough. She wants to fidget, anxious and restless, but squashes the urge.

There's an ache in her chest that never quite eases. Wistful but unobtrusive, these days. She waits, while that soft, inexorable gravity draws on her spark.

The strain and stiffness unwind from Windblade's wings as she tilts back her head to listen, perfectly still.

-

(And every visit, another piece of her seems to drift into place, from a long way off. Back from the shattering.)

-

Chromia was probably optimistic to hope Windblade wouldn't find anything to listen to out here. But a breeze runs through the solarium, setting off a rippling chime as the crystal reeds of the waterplants clink against each other, and when Chromia squints against the sunlight, she can almost glimpse the faint glyphs of light that turn and refract in front of Windblade, motes of blue and violet drifting over the water.

There aren't any Titans out here. Just Windblade.

(Who's not so different from one, these days.)

But Chromia's not lagging behind anymore. She _gets_ it, now. She waits, and after a long moment Windblade's helm tips to the side. When she turns, she does so with her whole upper body - her neck is still too stiff - and rests her weight on one palm. Backlit by the sun, her smile looks fond and tired and just a little lopsided, and so familiar that Chromia's spark aches again. The faint blue circuits in the bark mat brighten and pulse under her dark fingers, as though the tree it came from were still alive. Her hesitation lasts only a fraction of a second, but Chromia registers it when Windblade shifts one of her knees to stand up and the blue joint of her knee trembles. 

"Morning," Chromia says with a crooked smile of her own. Then she pushes off the doorframe, thumbs hooked over her hips as she ambles out onto the porch so Windblade doesn't have to. As she draws near the edge of the water, she spies a shimmer of silver in the water as something tiny flickers out of sight between the reeds.

Chromia's fairly sure they didn't have silver fish last week. It doesn't unnerve her nearly as much as it should, though. She doesn't have to brace herself for a new threat every day; she's not Windblade's bodyguard anymore. If she were, she'd be out on the perimeter with Strongarm and Caetra, patrolling. She wouldn't be here, in this home. They wouldn't be on the same recharge slab at night, trying to figure out what rest feels like, patching the wounds in their own minds.

It was a mistake, to think they could ever go back to that. Nothing is ever simple.

All they can do is try to be better.

Chromia goes to sit, and Windblade tilts her head back further still. Chromia pauses, one knee on the floor, and presses her forehelm to Windblade's. "Hey. Thought you were taking a break, this morning," she says, jerking a thumb vaguely at the sunlight. There's nothing there now. Nothing Chromia can see.

Windblade's smiles are always tinged with sadness. She presses her hand to Chromia's cheek, holding her there for a long moment as though memorizing her face. Chromia lets it happen, not quite leaning into the touch, and lets her own hand extend down to help keep her balance. Then Windblade presses her lips to Chromia's mouth, light and soft, before pulling her hand back and looking back out at the water. "I am," she promises, with that rueful twist in her smile. "Just - checking in. Vigilem frets."

Chromia rolls her optics. That name will never not send a frisson of unease through her. But that's just the world they live in. "Yeah? Tell him to give it a rest," she says, plopping down and kicking one leg over the side of the solarium, one arm planted behind Windblade as she leans back to bask in the cool air.

From the side, she can't see all of Windblade's expression. Can't see the tint of her optics, or the focus of the lenses. But Windblade rests her head on Chromia's shoulder, her pauldrons slotted neatly under the curve of Chromia's wheels, and from this angle Chromia _can_ raise her chin and rest it on top of her helm.

When the sunlight shifts to filter between the leaves, and Windblade's eyes burn just a little too bright again as her focus goes distant, Windblade turns her hand over and laces her fingers with Chromia's.

[Good morning.]

**Author's Note:**

> Just a [few](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ-pfYrDEpM) [citations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGR4U7W1dZU).


End file.
